The present invention relates to an improvement made to a connector, and more particularly to a connector that can be quickly manufactured and assembled and no short circuit would occur at junctures thereof.
Most of the connectors currently widely used with computers and/or video products include a steel case and a plastic body. The steel case houses a front part of the plastic body. Upper and lower rows of insertion terminals are provided to project from a front end surface of the plastic body. Rear ends of these insertion terminals are individually connected to corresponding leads in a whole bundle of interconnecting conductors by soldering. This type of connector is difficult to manufacture due to the inconvenient and time-consuming soldering operation for individual insertion terminals. When such type of connector is to be used with a desktop computer, it usually has a volume big enough for it to be manufactured without too much difficulty. However, when it is to be used with a notebook computer, LCD, etc., it must have a reduced volume that would inevitably cause difficulty in soldering individual leads to insertion terminals. Much more time is needed for soldering while short circuit might very possibly occur at soldered joints.
FIG. 1 is a disassembled sectional view of a conventional connector. As shown, the conventional connector includes a steel case 1 and a plastic body 2 that engage with each other. The steel case 1 houses a front part of the plastic body 2. Upper and lower rows of insertion terminals 21 are alternately provided at a front end surface of the plastic body 2. Rear ends of these insertion terminals 21 are individually connected to corresponding leads 22 in a whole bundle of interconnecting conductors by soldering. Each of the leads 22 is provided at outer surface with a movable insulating sleeve 23 which can be pushed forward along the lead 22 to locate around and cover a rear end of a corresponding insertion terminal 21 after the soldering operation. As mentioned above, the soldering of the leads 22 to the insertion terminals 21 is difficult and solder balls among the leads 22 tend to melt and cause short circuit. Therefore, this type of conventionally structured connector not only has production problem of time-consumed manufacture but also quality problem of possible short circuit at soldered joints.
To solve the shortcoming existed in the above-described conventional connector, another type of connector including an interconnecting PC board is developed. FIG. 2 is an exploded perspective view of this second type of conventional connector. Apart from the steel case 1 and the plastic body 2, the connector further includes a PC board 3. The plastic body 2 of this second type of conventional connector has two symmetrically rearward extended side walls 24. A guiding rail 25 having a retaining hole 26 is formed at an inner surface of each side wall 24. The PC board 3 has two rows of junctures 31 separately printed on top and bottom front surfaces thereof at positions corresponding to insertion terminals 21 provided on the plastic body 2. The PC board 3 is also provided on a top rear surface with a socket 32 corresponding to and electrically connected to the junctures 31, and at two lateral side surfaces with a protrusion 34 each. The PC board 3 can be fixedly assembled to the plastic body 2 by sliding forward along the guiding rails 25 at two sides of the plastic body 2 and engaging the protrusions 34 into the retaining holes 26. When the PC board 3 is fully inserted into the plastic body 2, rear ends of the insertion terminals 21 contact with and electrically connect to their respective corresponding junctures 31. The insertion terminals 21 and the junctures 31 are then soldered together. A commercially available flat cable 33 may be plugged into the socket 32.
This second type of conventional connector needs an additional socket 32 and therefore higher manufacturing cost. Moreover, the connector provides less better signal transmission efficiency because signals are transmitted from the rear ends of the insertion terminals via the PC board 3. Meanwhile, the connector occupies an increased volume.